Originally Posted by Perrotfish

Thankfully for us, and unfortunately for America, that's not how the free market work. Costs don't get driven down because they're 'unreasonably' high, or because they're out of line with other locations, they get forced down when the supply starts going up and/or the demand starts going down. Recently our government has moved to insure virtually every lower income American via Medicaid, and forced every state to pay Medicare rates for Medicaid patients. We also have a population that is getting fatter, sicker,and older by the day, and ever expanding range of life saving and life improving treatments that have increased the demand from the patients we already had. That is balanced against an almost static number of licensed physicians. Demand is increasing at a fantastic rate, and supply barely budging.

Unless the government finally gets aggressive enough to force us all into a national healthcare system and make working in a cash/private insurance model illegal (which I think is unlikely) I predict higher salaries in the years to come.